My Upgrade to Vista

If you are thinking of upgrading your Windows XP computer to Vista, read on. If nothing else, at least read the last paragraph of this blog entry.

In October I bought a Sony Vaio laptop at Costco for around $1500 (tax included). After my disastrous experience with three different HP laptops the previous year, I decided to go with Sony. I love my Vaio – it's thin, light-weight, white, and the keyboard is easy to use. This laptop came with 1GB of RAM, a 100GB hard drive, Windows XP SP2, and a "Windows Vista Capable" label.

Thanks to acquiring a Microsoft TechNet subscription with a recent contract writing project I completed for Microsoft, I had access to a free copy of Windows Vista. Thus, I decided to upgrade my laptop to Vista Ultimate several days before the Vista release. So, about 5 weeks ago, I spent a Saturday doing just that. (Note: I was stuck without sound and had to wait about three weeks to get an audio driver from Sony that would work with Vista. To this day I'm still waiting for Sony to release a Vista-compatible ALPS Touchpad driver for this thing. And you can forget Sony support offering any sort of a timeframe for the driver release--they claim they don't know anything.)

The upgrade from XP to Vista was easy but long. It took a couple hours, plus several more hours to restore data and apps. So while the upgrade was running, I did some re-organizing in my home office. I also installed Office 2007 while I was at it, and a copy of Visual Studio that I'd gotten from the Microsoft Company store using my alumni discount.

The end result was that Vista booted up beautifully in full Aero graphics mode. I loved the new desktop interface and fancy graphics. I started poking around, trying to figure out the new method of navigating folders (gad - Microsoft went and moved My Documents without telling me).

I got past the navigation learning curve, but it wasn't long before I realized that this just wasn't going to work out. Vista seemed to run OK at first, but it didn't seem that way for long. Although beautiful, it ran like a dog. I mean S-L-O-W. I started calling it the "click and wait OS."

For example, I'd click on an empty calendar slot in Outlook 2007 to add a new appointment. I'd click and wait. And wait. And wait. Thank god Microsoft finally got rid of the hour-glass (which I affectionately called the 'year-glass'), but the replacement isn't much better—a tiny spinning blue ring. Clicking on a calendar item (empty or not) would bring up the spinning ring for 10. . . 15. . . 20 long seconds before the appointment window would open. In the past it was instantaneous.

Rebooting didn't seem to help. So I monitored the built-in performance monitor utility in Control Panel. Even if Outlook was the only program running, my system was constantly using 72-76% of available memory. Most of it was dedicated to dwm.exe and wmplayer.exe (um, even without Windows Media Player running on the desktop?!). After some trial-and-error and online research, I determined that the only way to make my computer functional again was to shut down the Aero graphics.

It worked. Disabling Aero was the only way I could get reasonable (functional) speed out of Vista. What's the point of upgrading to Vista if you can't use the new graphics? Sure, it's more secure, but that's a given with any new OS. It has to be.

What I learned this past week is that all the new Sony Vaios that ship with Vista installed now come with two GB of RAM, not 1GB like my "Vista Capable" Vaio. This pissed me off. On Microsoft.com I discovered that all a computer needs to qualify for that label is 512MB of RAM. Are you kidding me? That's like buying a car without wheels. I felt duped.

It took me two weeks to track down the price of adding 1GB RAM to my existing Vaio. This was an annoying experience because the Sony Style Web site's "Memory Finder" feature failed to list my model (VGN-FE790G). It listed all previous models. You could buy RAM for those, but not mine. I submitted a question via online form and the only response I got was, "We don't have your model number. Call this number." Duh!

I finally got through on their phone line and, lo-and-behold, after being on hold for several minutes, the sullen rep came back on the line and told me that I could in fact buy another 1GB memory for my Vaio. I was ecstatic. I'll just upgrade the memory, I thought to myself. That'll save me having to spend another weekend reinstalling all my apps and restoring all my data on a new laptop. Yes!

No. Then I found out how much money Sony wanted for that 1GB of RAM. Are you sitting down? $410.50. My jaw dropped open when the job-hating Sony rep gave me this information. I told her to forget it, I'll just return the laptop. She couldn't have cared less.

This is what gets me, though—you can go online, build a new Sony laptop and pay $125 for that extra gig of RAM. But to upgrade your already purchased "Vista Capable" laptop to actually be able to run Vista and its fancy default graphics, they want over four hundred dollars. What a rip-off.

Thank god for Costco's 6-month computer return policy (no questions asked). I've decided to return the Vaio to Costco and custom-order a new Vaio online from Sony. All-in-all, it'll cost me about $300 more for this newer Vaio – but it has twice the RAM, a 60% larger hard drive, is a newer model, has a better video card (hopefully faster), and comes with Bluetooth. I'll have to spend another Saturday installing and configuring all my apps, but with any luck it'll be the last time I have to do that for a while. (I also recently had to rebuild my Dell tower after Partition Magic ate my C: drive.)

The moral of this story is – do not buy a computer that has less than 2GB RAM if you plan to run Vista. Do not buy a "Vista Capable" computer. Period. It's not enough hardware, trust me. Instead, make sure the label says "Vista Premium." See http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/capable.mspx for more info. You'll be glad you did.